Kokoro Connect Episode 14: Lives in Shambles

“What the hell? What the HELL? Then what about my feelings?” – Inaba Himeko

Summary

A new phenomenon has started, in light of Iori’s recent rejection towards Taichi – emotion transmission, where random thoughts are transmitted at random times to various members of the Cultural Research Club. When Inaban’s thoughts of liking Taichi are revealed to the rest of the group, it blows up into some scary revelations over Iori’s inner nature, leading to a rift between the group that occurs at an unstable time for the future of the CRC.

Impression

“And so, Nagase Iori broke.”

It’s Kokoro Connect again! I swear this was turning up in March the last time I checked, but recently there’s been news of the Michi Random arc airing all at once on TV in a block of episodes, so I’m glad we get more emotional shouting and drama before March – and there actually is more of it, with the episode being a solid 28 minutes due to the new liberty they have for releasing an arc all at once, without confining to the usual 22-minute limitation.

Even so, it didn’t take long for shit to go down. Featuring the latest phenomenon courtesy of Fuusen Kazura, it’s emotion transmission! Putting it simply, it’s similar to telepathy – where your thoughts and emotions are transmitted to someone else in the group. Except as always, the timing of the transmission, who is involved and to whom is random. But as I’m sure you all saw, it’s not so much “random” as it is “the person whose relationship with you gets fucked up because of this thought”.

Drawing away slightly from personal problems (though we may get to that later in the arc) we’ve returned to romance, and finally, I think the show’s stepping towards the right direction with Taichi x Inaban. Seriously, that’s my clear OTP in this show, even after Yui x Aoki. Inaban eventually managed to give her chocolate to Taichi, and it was a nice time to especially after he complimented her – so that’s how he picks up so many girls xDD Iori was a pretty good match with Taichi too, so I wasn’t going to complain much – which is why it was such a shock when Iori randomly said that something wasn’t right, and rejected him, especially when Taichi was the one who asked her out. Iori and Inaban have been fighting over Taichi for all this time, so I would have thought she’d be excited rather than forlorn. Being turned down right before Valentine’s Day isn’t exactly the best morale booster, either.

“You’re getting depressed when you’re the one who snapped at me? Selfish much?”

Everyone seems to have kinda accepted that this sort of thing will happen, and instead of trying to go against it, mope around or fight it, the Cultural Research Club as a whole seem to be determined to get through it and hope that their bonds will pull them through. Well, uh…that didn’t really work out, did it? All it started with was Inaban accidentally revealing her love for Taichi, and then Taichi accidentally revealing that he was rejected by Iori, which led into a shouting fest where Himeko blew up, Iori tried to apologize then felt really awkward when everyone else realized it was just a facade. It didn’t help when a second thought from Iori was transmitted, which led everyone -including me- to realize that she’s actually pretty cold inside. Everyone didn’t think that Iori actually had a personality like that, and thought that she was cheerful and friendly, like the facade she put on for her friend the next morning. She’s actually excellent at putting a mask on, which makes me wonder at how bad her domestic abuse really was. Secret feelings and thoughts in general are never what you actually mean, and those thoughts are kept secret for a reason – because they might hurt someone emotionally.

I think the whole situation over the risk of losing Gotou as an adviser as well as beating the Jazz Band is only a false front to something much deeper – with some of the most unlikely characters too, as Fuusen Kazura approaching Aoki and trying to rile up an interesting answer from him seems to suggest. I agree with Aoki’s outlook though – he doesn’t have to go out of his way to do something special because of this phenomenon, and he should just be himself, which is the best thing to do in order to normalise the situation. This is only the start of the arc though, so I can only imagine that things are still gonna go downhill from here – I think I’ll go watch Episode 15 now.